Arc II, Chapter 42: Medical History

“You asked about Simon Halle,” he said. He was in bad shape. Not dead, but it was clear that the fall had injured him severely. “How do you know that name?”

I had asked Off-Screen. He had not answered me at the time. I suspected that the script had been the reason. Now, both of us Written Off in a dark tunnel, the script didn’t appear to be stopping him.

“I met him a few months ago,” I said. “At Halle Castle.”

Dr. Halle leaned his head back. I saw despair on his face. He didn’t speak for a moment as he took it in.

“They brought that damn castle too. How could they resist?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid that one wrong utterance might make Halle less likely to talk to me or, worse, he might decide to attack.

He looked me in the eyes. I could see him breathing deeply through his nose.

“Is he… like me?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He’s a… scientist.”

“They brought him to Carousel. How could I have missed it?”

I thought for a moment. I remembered looking at the map Grace had set out to show how Carousel grew over the years.

“The castle he lives in,” I said. “It got brought here in 1999. But you would call it Carousel 1999 because that’s something different, right?”

I had noticed that when the Paragons spoke of dates, they often put the word Carousel in front of it as if they were not just talking about a year.

Halle nodded. “This story takes place in Carousel 1995, but I expect the real year is something different.”

“2022,” I said.

“Amazing,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Carousel 1999. I’ve never been cast there. They kill me off in Carousel 1995, as you’ve just seen. But Simon, is he well?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Come out with it, boy,” Halle said.

“He’s still trying to bring back his dead wife. He can disconnect his soul from his body. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Halle nodded. “Astral science. When he was young, he showed much interest in the subject. I had hoped he would grow out of it. A waste of a brilliant mind. If only I had not gotten stripped from my family, he might have fared better.”

He tried to keep an even tone in his voice, but I could hear him struggling to remain composed.

“You were taken from your family?” I said.

Halle nodded, strangely ashamed. “When my experiments were prematurely uncovered, they tried accusing me of all manner of malfeasance. They could never understand how important my work was. Most of my patients rallied to my side at the trial; they testified on my behalf. They knew that once my methodology was perfected, I could correct previous mistakes.”

He swallowed hard. “Of course, that was never to be.”

“Did you get an offer to come here?” I asked after he paused.

“By correspondence in my jail cell. An offer of amnesty. A job offer to work for a rich and influential family and all of the finances and subjects to continue my research. Given what I was facing, I hurriedly wrote back, accepting. A mistake, perhaps. I don’t even remember arriving.”

There were a million things I wanted to ask. I tried to sort through them, to find the ones he would answer, the ones he would know about, but the more I thought, the more I feared ruining the conversation. All I could do was keep him talking.

“So you didn’t know anything about how things would be once you got here?”

“I got everything I was promised, but not in the way I expected.”

“That doesn’t sound fair,” I said.

“Don’t pretend to be concerned about my treatment,” he said. “I know you would have killed me had you the opportunity or ability.”

“It was a courtesy,” I said. “Something you’re supposed to say.”

“True enough,” he said. “You’ll find that the working definition of fairness is very warped in this place.”

“The illusion of fairness.”

He nodded.

“You would not be able to understand this,” he said, “But I didn’t notice that anything strange was happening for many years. My sense of the ordinary was taken from me. It all felt reasonable. The killings. The shadowy borders beyond understanding. I didn’t question it.”

Shadowy borders?

“Wait,” I said. “Were you brought here before the game was created?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Constance had told us that the actual “game” at Carousel wasn’t always here.

Halle nodded. “I will say, Dyrkon, despite his deceptions, did keep his every word. He was a very reasonable man whenever you found a moment to speak with him.”

“Is he still around?” I asked.

He ignored my question. More than that, it was like he didn’t even hear it.

“When I woke up for the first time. I was a victim of a loathsome creature. I realized that I had not aged in decades. The Geists and their scandal were ever-growing then. I was always their family doctor. I realized I had not seen my family in all the time I had been in Carousel. I just hadn’t noticed they weren’t here. I was perfectly oblivious. I asked Dyrkon about it, and he was, again, very reasonable. He gave me my complete consciousness. All of my memories. At that moment, I knew exactly what kind of place this was. It was a kindness on his part. I’ll never forget that.

“And then he asked me. Would I still want him to bring my family here? Of course, I said no. I begged him not to involve them, to let me be enough,” he said. Tears flowed from his eyes. “He promised he wouldn’t. He assured me. I should have got it in writing. They brought my family here anyway, it seems.”

“Do you still have the clarity he gave you?” I asked. “Do you remember what he showed you?”

Halle shook his head. “I heard it said somewhere that we only remember that which makes us better at our roles. I do not remember where I heard it. That became even more true when the game began. No longer was the world in chaos. It was organized, you see. The horrors were tamed. They could not have things the way they were before. Everything needs to be separate. Everything needs to be locked away in its place.”

“They put everything in a script,” I said. I didn’t know who “they” were, but I would get to that.